The present invention relates to communication systems, and in particular to systems for selecting alternative routes for telephone calls.
As business is conducted over ever expanding geographical areas, the use of telecommunication services to transmit voice and data signals is continually increasing. As a result of the increased use of these services, the cost for such services becomes a significant part of the cost of doing business. Therefore, most businesses are continually looking for ways to reduce their communication costs.
One known method of obtaining xe2x80x9cfreexe2x80x9d telephone calls is to transmit the calls via a global wide area computer network such as the Internet. In effect, these calls are not free because the user leases the telephone lines that are used to provide their Internet access, however, calls placed over the Internet are not separately billed.
In the past, it has not been possible to seamlessly integrate the Internet as an alternative route for transmitting telephone calls because there is no way of knowing whether an intended recipient has the ability to receive such calls.
Given the shortcomings in the prior art, there is a need for a telephone communication system that can reduce communication costs by automatically determining when it is possible to transmit calls on the Internet to utilize excess bandwidth.
To reduce the cost associated with transmitting telephone calls over a public switched telephone network (PSTN), the present invention is a communication system that transmits calls from a source private branch exchange or central office to a destination private branch exchange or central office. The source private branch exchange is coupled to a telephony Internet server that can transmit a call over a global wide area computer network such as the Internet. To determine whether the call can be transmitted over the Internet, the source private branch exchange transmits a message to the destination private branch exchange over the PSTN to determine whether it is similarly equipped with a telephony Internet server. If so, and the bandwidth available on the Internet will accommodate an additional call, then the telephone call is routed to the Internet.
The quality of the call placed on the Internet is continually monitored. If the quality drops below a predetermined threshold, the call is rerouted from the Internet back to the public switched telephone network.